


Sanctuary

by Tierfal



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a Russian café, the Master reflects on things that are and always have been, which is better than thinking about the likelihood of him getting frostbite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> OH, SWEET LORD, super-super-super-old fic is super-super-super old.

The Master is in Saint Petersburg.

It is fucking freezing.

The Master doesn’t like this city, despite its occasionally impressive grandeur, but what he likes even less is all the grainy, incontrovertible CCTV footage of the Doctor running amok with his little friends.

Saint Petersburg is far enough away. The Doctor’s still leery of Russia, no matter how many decades it’s been since the Cold War, and most of his pets object to jaunts around the Arctic Circle.

So does the Master. A particularly sadistic slush puddle soaked his toes on the trudge over; he’s been sitting in this crummy little café for a full half-hour, and he still can’t feel his toes. He’s probably going to catch a cold and die and waste this whole fantastic plan. _Fuck_.

He stamps his feet a little and frowns out the window at the torrents of new snow. White dervishes, blotting out the skyline, smothering the details, washing it out, bleaching it, erasing the city and the world beyond. Nice little world, soon to be his. Maybe he’ll spare Saint Petersburg in recompense for unknowingly offering sanctuary.

…nah.

He can almost see shapes in the whipping snow—silhouettes. He drums his fingers on the countertop, sips of his self-mixed cocoa and vodka, and grimaces at the taste.

It’s nothing personal. Or not much.

He’s actually been vaguely fond of some of the Doctor’s companions over the years. It’s not his fault that the Doctor has a suspicious tendency to select attractive human beings to tag along on his hands-on ethics demonstrations—if one were to excise their reductive conceptualizations of morality, possibly surgically, many of them would almost make acceptable minions. At the very least, they’d make convenient Time Lord-sized shields.

The problem is that the Doctor makes them more than that.

The problem is that the Doctor elevates them, enriches them, shows them just how much they can be.

And how does he go about such wondrous charity? With little more than _love_. Just that. Just the power of his affection, of his endless forgiveness, of his patience and his commitment and his deep, underlying adoration. Just all of the things he never gave the Master in any of their respective lives.

But that’s all right. That makes him burn inside, in the pit of his stomach, a tide that seethes to match the drumbeat, and that he can utilize. Hate is fine. Hurt is fine. Jealousy is galvanizing; it always has been.

The problem is that the unequal treatment isn’t the end of it. There’s something about the Doctor and his _companions_ that’s subtler and worse, because it’s unsettling, and it… scares him a little bit.

The Doctor gives them all the things he never gave the Master, yes, but the Master has seen this Doctor’s eyes, which is enough. The Doctor also gives them what he cannot give himself—esteem, and absolution.

Somewhere past this veil of blinding white, there is a Doctor who is every bit as lost. Somewhere, there is a Doctor who has burned his bridges, who has no fortresses left. There is a Doctor without a home and without a sanctuary.

They’re more alike than they’ve ever been.

The Master downs a shot of chocolate-gritty vodka, but the shudder doesn’t start in his throat.


End file.
